Senior Member of American Society for Quality (Member #: 00749775), International Member of American Production and Inventory Control Society (Member #: 1023620), and Senior Member of Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (Member #: 880194630).

Senior Member of American Society for Quality (Member #: 00749775), International Member of American Production and Inventory Control Society (Member #: 1023620), and Senior Member of Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (Member #: 880194630).

There have been many SUCCESSFUL stories of people who manage to attain peak achievement WITHOUT facilities that can be read and are commonly known. BUT the story of an organization, consisting of up to 5000 (five thousand) employees with ONLY grade 8 education (equivalent to the second year at junior high school), that DOES NOT HAVE or use facilities, but nevertheless remains SUCCESSFUL attaining world-class achievement is only Dabbawalas in Mumbai, India. The following is an important lesson on why Dabbawalas achieves world-class SUCCESS.

Dabbawalas’ Background

Dabbawala is a term for a person in Mumbai, India, who is a part of a delivery system that collects hot food in lunchboxes from workers’ houses at around 10:30 am; takes the lunch-packed lunchboxes to their workplaces by mainly using bicycles, buses and trains; and returns the empty lunchboxes back to the workers’ houses or residences.

Dabbawalas refer to a group of people who are part of delivery system that deliver lunch-packed lunchboxes and return the empty lunchboxes after lunch time. The lunchboxes are taken from the houses of professional workers and delivered to their offices and returned back to their houses. Presently, every day Dabbawalas must take 200,000 (two hundred thousand) lunch-packed lunchboxes from houses to be delivered to the offices and returned those 200,000 empty lunchboxes back to the houses WITH NO MISTAKE. This means that every day there are 400,000 (four hundred thousand) shipping and return transactions, with the fault rate of one per 16,000,000 (sixteen millions) transactions or with the process capability of around 8.9 sigma.

In 1890, in Bombay (now Mumbai), Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started a lunch delivery service with about a hundred employees. In 1930, he informally sought to unite Dabbawallas. Then, registered the service as an official organization in 1956 under the name “Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust”. Subsequently, in 1968 it was listed as “Mumbai Tiffin Box Supplier’s Association”. The current leadership of the association consists of Bhau Saheb Karbande as the president and Subhash Talekar as the Secretary General.

This Dabbawalas organization consists of 5,000 (five thousand) employees, with the work area of approximately 60-70 km, who only use simple tools like bicycles, carts, etc., and take public transportation like trains and public buses. The total time spent in taking, delivering, and returning those 200,000 lunchboxes to the house has been recorded in the Guinness World Records book as the organization with the best time management achievement in the world (having the error rate of only one per 16,000,000 transactions). The average salary of employees per month is only INR (Indian Rupee) 8,000 or approximately Rp. 1,686,138 per month. The cost of a lunchbox delivery service consisting of delivering lunch-pack lunchbox and returning empty lunchbox everyday is around INR 1000 per lunchbox per month or approximately Rp. 210,900 per lunchbox per month.

Some institutions that have invited associates of Dabbawalas to share their experiences are:

IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) of Bombay, Delhi, Kharagpur and other IITs

IIM (Indian Institute of Management) of Indore, Lucknow and other IIMs

Many industry meetings in India conducted by CII (Confederation of Indian Industries)

Business and management students from renowned universities in the USA and India have always made Dabbawalas the study material related to some of the following case study questions:

What are the key SUCCESS factors of Dabbawalas and why has this organization been able to survived and developed since 1890 until now?

What business model is being implemented by Dabbawalas and what are the key issues that will determine Dabbawalas’ future development?

What are the key controlling factors that are able to improve the performance of this Dabbawalas consisting of 5,000 (five thousand) employees to the level of 8.9 sigma (one error per 16,000,000 transactions)?

What are the key factors to improve the economies of scale and economies of scope of Dabbawalas in the future?

Other high critical questions at Higher-Order Thinking Skills— HOTS level in the Bloom’s taxonomy.

The Case Study of Dabbawalas has been incorporated into Harvard Business Review under the title: Mumbai’s Models of Service Excellence, written by Prof. Stefan Thomke, November 2012, a professor of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Stefan Thomke (2012) notes several important points in this case study on Dabbawalas:

Dabbawalas has an independently organized democratic management with a flat organizational structure based on team work. Dabbawalas basically manages itself in connection with recruitment, logistics, customers acquisition and retention, and conflict resolution independently through empowering all existing employees. This helps them operate efficiently, keeps costs low and very high service quality at the error rate of only one per 16,000,000 transactions (8.9 sigma level).

All workers (5,000 people) voluntarily and trustworthily contribute by providing insurance and occasional financial assistances – for example, when a worker needs to replace a stolen or irreparably damaged bicycle.

Each Dabbawala is an entrepreneur responsible for negotiating prices with his/her own customers. However, the executive committee govern and set guidelines for pricing, which take into account factors such as the distance between the customer’s residence and office and the distance between the customer’s office and the nearest train station. Because a Dabbawala has a close relationship with his/her customers and tends to work in the same location for many years, the relationship is generally long-term and trusting.

A Dabbawala within the group has no monopoly over a particular area; he/she is encouraged to find new customers, even in buildings served by co-workers. However, once the relationship is established, no other dabbawala is allowed to pursue the same customer and “recruit” that same customer.

The Dabbawalas take advantage of their more relaxed afternoon schedules to interact with customers to share information about upcoming changes, collect monthly fees, and discuss any issues that have occurred and will likely occur in the future.

When someone wants to join a local Dabbawala group, that group will assess whether there is enough demand to add another person to the group. New employee should be trained in work by the group. They learn to help in any activities.

After a six-month trial period, a Dabbawala can buy the business equal to 10 times of the expected monthly income. So, for example, if a new employee expects to generate 7,000 rupees per month (around Rp. 1,475,632) in a given unit, then he/she will need 70,000 rupees to become an equity partner (joint capital owner) who will share the profits.

A Dabbawala worker with more than 10 years experience works as a supervisor, or muqaddam (in Hindi language. Each group has one or more muqaddams, who oversee coding, sorting, and loading and unloading lunchboxes as well as are responsible for resolving disputes, overseeing the collection of lunchboxes, and assisting in problem solving.

Members choose representatives from muqaddams to serve on two management committees that meet monthly to deal with operational and organizational issues as well as issues that can not be resolved at the local level.

Dabbawalas has simple process, high flexibility, and firmness that must be followed by Dabbawalas. For the Dabbawalas, having the right process means more than just applying an efficient workflow. This also covers almost everything within the organization, including information management and compliance with established standards.

Each lunchbox has a simple code. To convey information, Dabbawalas rely on a very basic symbol system. The lunchbox lid up has three key marks on it. The first is the large and thick number in the middle, which indicates the area where the lunchbox should be sent. The second is a group of characters on the edge of the lid: a number for the Dabbawala that will make delivery, an alphabetic code (two or three letters) for the office building name, and a number showing the floor number. The third – a combination of color and shape, and in some cases, motif – shows the origin station. Customers supply small bags to carry their lunchboxes, and variations in the shape and color of bags help workers remember which customers’ lunchboxes are.

An example of the code for a lunchbox is shown in the attached Chart 1 above.

The simple symbols above will provide information to Dabbawalas about where the lunchboxes need to be delivered to, namely:

1

The number for the district where a Dabbawala will take the lunchbox: Ballard Estate

_

Code indicating the origin station: Kurla

1

The destination station code for the Dabbawala who will deliver the lunchbox:

SN

Code for the delivery building: Sant Building

1

1st floor of the delivery building. (Customers names may also be listed here, if there are more than one customer at the same floor).

Each Dabbawalas group has two or three additional workers as a safeguard, considering the time set to take the lunchbox basket at customer’s house is only about 30 seconds to 60 seconds. Any small delay will have a negative chain effect that impacts thousands of shipments. Each Dabbawala member receives cross training in various activities, such as: collecting, sorting, transporting, financing, and establishing customer relationships.

Note: Marriott Hotel emulates a similar approach. About half of the hotel’s employees get cross-training in various activities, such as: being receptionists, front-line porters, etc., so that every hotel employee can quickly help guests with their luggages if there is a lack of available on-duty porters at the time.

As demonstrated by Zeynep Ton in “Why ‘Good Jobs’ Are Good for Retailers” (Harvard Business Review January-February, 2012), cross-training is one of the elements that allows retailers to achieve SUCCESS, such as QuikTrip department stores, Mercadona and Trader Joe supermarkets, and Costco wholesalers, to not only invest in many store employees, but to also have the lowest prices in their industry, solid financial performance, and better customer service than their competitors.”

Many manufacturers depend on independent reserve workers. At Toyota, group and team leaders are also reserve workers, who are ready to fill in quickly for any tasks or functions if needed.

Fair compensation system (employees can also be profit-sharing investors)

Very high employee engagement

Highly efficient operating costs.

The relationship between managers and employees is very good.

Various awards for Dabbawalas:

The best time management

The smallest error rate (one per 16,000,000 transactions)

Despite having low-educated employees (only grade 8), but become a legend for the highly educated people in the world

Working with very superior ethics

Become an efficient and superior service provider model in the world

Despite having no facilities but still attaining world-class achievement

Obtaining ISO 9001 certificate

Obtaining quality and reliability certificate

Some Management Lessons from the Dabbawalas Case

From the descriptions above, there are several management lessons that can be drawn from the Dabbawalas case in Mumbai, India, as follows:

Discipline. Dabbawalas are very disciplined professionals. Maintaining accuracy close to 100% (with error rate of only one per 16,000,000 transactions) in every 400,000 transactions / per day is not an easy task and is almost impossible for people who have no discipline. For personal dabbawalas, “Error is Equal to Horror”, and they maintain a 100% track record for timely delivery. Errors very rarely occur. The important management lesson is that a disciplined team has the ability to deliver error-free result in any situation, including the most critical situation.

Organization. Each Dabbawala collects lunch-filled lunchboxes his/her allocated area and gives the lunchboxes at the same area to the assigned locations within a certain period of time. Those lunch-filled lunchboxes are then organized and brought to various destinations via public transport. All skills related to taking, collecting, sorting, delivering, handing, collecting, and sorting the empty lunchboxes to be returned back to customers’ houses customers must be completed within six hours every day for 400,000 transactions without making any mistake. The important management lesson is that if we have a well-structured team, where each member realizes his/her responsibility and performs his/her tasks timely, then the desired results can be achieved easily.

Activity Management. If there is a team member who is unable to perform his/her task due to a reason such as sickness or other, there is always a substitute who will carry out his/her task. Thus, there is no delayed or unfulfilled task to the customers only because of the reasons like sickness, permission, and so on. Every Dabbawala person works in synergy to achieve the same goal of delivering services in a timely manner. The important management lesson is that if the team focuses on the ultimate goal of providing 100% customer satisfaction, then there is no reason to stop it from delivering the best results to customers.

Time Management. Dabbawalas can not and should not be late. They have to deliver 200,000 lunch-filled lunchboxes everyday before lunch time at the given addresses. All works depend on effective time management. Each task must be completed within a certain period of time. If someone is unable to do so, then an alternative should be done immediately. The important management lesson is that very efficient time management.

Simple, Flexible and Accurate Process. Dabbawalas do not use technology or software to manage their work. Each code used, in the form of symbols and numbers on the lunchboxes’ lids, is very simple and has the basic information, such as: street addresses / floors (of both the customer’s office and residence). They use standard organizational method that does not change. Lunchboxes used for delivery have the same structure and standard codes. The important management lesson is numerical code or simple rule and standard can help to better organize.

Strong and Steady Culture. A Dabbawala stays and works together in the group for the rest of his/her life. Thus, the core of friendship, care and bonding is very high and that will help them to work together on the higher level of mutual understanding. Having the same code of ethics and white-hats-and-uniforms will make them unique and easy to find all over Mumbai, India. The important management lesson is understanding the sense of belonging is very important in a team. This will improve performance, work quality and indirectly add value to the organizational work culture.